For the second consecutive day, Freddie beat me into the office. I said, “Are you going for a personal record?” He didn’t know what I was talking about, and I didn’t feel like explaining. I went to the coffeemaker instead and brewed a cup.
“You look like shit,” he said.
“Between John Kaushal’s bourbon and Alex Campbell’s imagination, with any luck I’ll be dead by noon.”
Freddie smiled at the mention of Alexandra’s name.
“The professor teachin’ the old dog new tricks, is she?” he asked.
“Shut up, Freddie.”
“Touchy.”
I sat behind my desk. Freddie sat behind his, his fingers locked behind his head.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“The Fredericks part of Fredericks and Taylor is doin’ good. I’m not so sure about the Taylor part.”
“Are we all caught up with our other clients?”
“Close. What about the lawyers?”
I told him.
“Man.” He made the word sound like it had multiple syllables.
“I’ve only spoken to three of them so far,” I said. “God knows what the others have to say.”
Freddie placed an index finger against his cheek.
“The fact that all three cases somehow involve the Guernsey family makes me go ‘Hmm,’” he said.
“I don’t know. The hacker works for them in Helin’s divorce case, but he works against them in Puchner’s class action suit. As for Kaushal’s murder, all it proves is that rich people sometimes are acquainted with other rich people.”
“At least it gives us a place to start.”
“I suppose.”
I sipped my coffee without appreciating it. Freddie watched me do it.
“What’s your story t’day, Taylor?” he asked. “Feelin’ sorry for yourself or somethin’?”
“There’s a guy out there who killed his wife and stashed her body, and he not only got away with it, he’s gonna profit big-time.”
“You sound like this is somethin’ new, guys gettin’ away with shit. It happens every day. You and me know that. Man, what we do for a living, sometimes we help.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that when I woke up this morning my first thought was—do we really want to catch this guy? The hacker, I mean. Do we really want to stop him?”
“The way I look at it—we’ve talked about this before. The way I look at it, we’re workin’ for the lawyers, not their clients, you know? I don’t care all that much for Puchner. Man’s kind of a dick. But the others—Helin, Scott Mickelson, Doug Jernigan, Kaushal. If the hacker’s shit hits the fan, they’re the ones gonna get fucked up. I like those guys. They’re good customers. So, yeah, let’s get this asshole. What? We gotta talk about it?”
“You’re the one who said we shouldn’t have taken the money.”
“I never said that. I just asked what we were willin’ to do t’ earn it.”
“It’s still a good question.”
“Yeah, well, while you’re ponderin’, Mickelson said he can meet with you at ten this mornin’.”
Freddie held up a pink slip of paper taken from the pad we use to jot down phone messages, $9.49 for two dozen at OfficeMax. I crossed the office and snatched it from his fingers.
“Have you talked to Sara?” I asked.
“She said she’ll bop in later this mornin’. Or maybe Steve. You never know with them. Do you really think our clients are surveilling us?”
“Someone is.”
“O’Neill wouldn’t give ’em up?”
“He’s not afraid of me.”
“I shoulda talked to ’im.”
“Yeah, you’re a bad man.”
“Naw, I’m not. I got the rep, though, and sometimes that’s enough. What’s the plan?”
“I’ll keep on the lawyers. Once you’re caught up with our other clients, why don’t you go ahead and cross-index the five cases, where were they tried, who were the prosecutors, the judges, the bailiffs, I don’t know what else. Might be the hacker is someone in the legal system that’s witnessed so much bullshit he finally snapped. It could happen, right?”
“I’m surprised it doesn’t happen all the time. My thing, though—I still think it’s about blackmail. If not, why hasn’t NIMN uploaded all those documents by now?”
“Authentication. They’re trying to verify that the documents are legit.”
“In that case, time’s a-wastin’.”
Associates and Kaushal consisted of six attorneys with a single office in downtown St. Paul, and yet if it wasn’t the best-known law firm in Minnesota, it was in the top three. Hannum, Hillsman, and Byers employed over 250 attorneys with offices in eleven locations in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and China, but I doubted one person in a hundred had ever heard of it. It made me wonder if that was on purpose.
Its Minneapolis headquarters was actually located in Plymouth, about thirteen miles west of the city. I arrived ten minutes early and waited twenty-five minutes before Mickelson would see me.
A young woman who wore her dress the way tomatoes wear their skin led me to his office. She noticed my eyes occasionally drifting to her backside as we walked, yet she didn’t seem to mind. She announced my name when we entered the office, but not the names of the three people who were waiting for me. That was left to Mickelson. Introductions were made and hands were shaken. The four of us sat in a circle around a low glass coffee table not unlike the one in John Kaushal’s office, and I wondered if lawyers all shopped at the same furniture store.
Mickelson was on my right, Mary Feeney, the mayor of the City of Minneapolis, was on my left, and across from me was Bryan Daggett. All I was told about him was that he represented Ryan-Reed Inc.
The woman found a chair outside the circle, crossed her slender legs, and began recording every word that was spoken in a green steno book. I kept glancing at her. There was nothing sexual about it, though. The woman wasn’t that pretty. It was because she gave me an idea that made me go “Hmm.”
“We are greatly distressed by the events that have transpired,” Feeney said.
“I don’t blame you, Madam Mayor, Ms. Mayor—how should I address you?”
“Mary is fine. As I was saying, if certain documents were made public, the consequences would be quite embarrassing.”
“Yes,” Daggett said. “Very much so.”
He was looking directly at Mickelson when he spoke, and it occurred to me that Ryan-Reed would not hesitate for a moment to sue its own law firm in retaliation for failing to secure the firm’s private data. Mickelson, though, didn’t seem to mind the stare or the veiled threat.
“Have you made any progress?” he asked me.
“We’ve identified a number of possibilities that seem promising.”
“I know poli-speak when I hear it,” Feeney said. “Are you telling us the truth or just blowing smoke?”
“I’m telling you the truth, Madam—Mary. We do have a few ideas that we’re pursuing. The problem is time. If my partner is right and this is all part of an elaborate extortion scheme, good. We can deal with that one way or another. If, however, the hacker keeps his promise to upload the material on NIMN … I’ve been checking the website every couple of hours.”
“I’ve been doing it every ten minutes.”
“Tell us what you know,” Daggett said.
“I will,” I said. “First, though, tell me what you know.”
“You have the facts.”
“I want to hear the story. In your own words. My experience, how you say something is almost as important as what you say.”
The way they squirmed in their chairs, neither the mayor nor Daggett seemed comfortable with that idea. Mickelson, on the other hand, spoke right up.
“Are you familiar with the Supreme Court decision that vacated the conviction of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell?” he asked.
“No.”
“McDonnell was originally convicted of federal corruption charges. It was proved that he accepted a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of goods, including a Rolex watch, and over twenty thousand dollars’ worth of designer clothes for his wife from a supporter who ran a company that manufactured nutritional supplements. In exchange, he texted an aide and told him to make sure that the supporter got the meetings he wanted with certain state officials.
“The court ruled, however, that the Virginia jury was wrong to think that McDonnell’s actions counted as official corruption. Instead, it said, to prove bribery there must be an official act that involved the formal exercise of governmental power. Setting up a meeting with regulators, telling a government worker to listen to the supporter, issuing a directive that says the supporter should be assisted in every way, none of these things are official acts. According to the court, it’s merely access. That’s why the charges against Mayor Feeney were dropped.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Taylor, should I explain to you the nature of politics in America?” Feeney asked.
“If you like.”
“Everyone wants access. Everyone wants to be heard. Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents all the time so that they can be heard. We contact other officials on their behalf. We include them in events. That’s part of our job. Should I ignore even the most commonplace requests for assistance, should I blow off citizens with legitimate concerns, simply because they might have donated money to my campaign? Of course not.
“I personally believe that business is overregulated. I believe if we want to grow the economy, we must get government off the backs of business owners. That’s the platform I ran on. Ryan-Reed agreed with me and donated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to my election. I won, by a seven-point margin, I might add. Afterward, Ryan-Reed contacted my office and asked to discuss the possibility of building a new plant on the North Side. Should I have refused to take the meeting?
“It’s routine political courtesy, Taylor. It’s part of the everyday functioning of elected officials. What I’m doing is allowing citizens to participate in the democratic process. So what if Ryan-Reed helped pay for my daughter’s wedding reception or gave me the use of a Lexus convertible? So what if they provided me with a fifty-thousand-dollar no-interest loan?”
“If you want government to listen to you, you have to pay up,” Daggett said. “That’s what the Supreme Court ruled.”
“Are you sure that’s really what it had in mind?” I asked.
“The federal prosecutor claimed my actions were improperly influenced by Ryan-Reed,” Feeney said. “But she couldn’t prove there was a direct exchange of an official act for money. That’s why the charges were dropped. From the outset, I strongly asserted my innocence before God. I swore that I did not betray the sacred trust bestowed on me by the citizens of Minneapolis. I was right to do so.”
“Why, then, is everyone worried about our hacker?” I asked.
Mickelson eventually ended the long pause that followed my question.
“The mayor likes to make to-do lists,” he said. “She writes down items of importance, tracks their progress, and checks them off when completed.”
“So does my mother.”
“Did your mother ever begin proceedings to evict sixty-two at-risk families from their low-income housing so that Ryan-Reed could build a plant at a location with easy access to the freeway? Did she do it on the same morning that fifty thousand dollars was deposited in her private account?”
“The plant would bring much-needed jobs and tax revenue to the city,” the mayor said.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Daggett asked.
“Don’t mind me,” Mickelson said. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”
I was shocked, not by the idea that the mayor of the City of Minneapolis would take a bribe. C’mon. It’s politics in America. I was surprised that she put it in writing. I said so.
“I like to keep track of things,” Feeney said.
“How many deals like this are you involved in, that you need written notes to keep track?”
“That’s an insulting question,” Daggett said. “I demand that you apologize to the mayor. Apologize, I say.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Challenge me to a duel?”
“Taylor,” Mickelson said. “Cut it out.”
“How many people knew about this?” I asked.
“The plans for Ryan-Reed to expand to the North Side or my notes?” the mayor asked.
“Both?”
“The plans were common knowledge in my office. Certainly once we began evictions from public housing and eminent domain proceedings they became well known. The media covered it extensively. As for my practice of note keeping, it was never something I talked about, just did. People who knew me might have been aware I kept them, but they weren’t available to anyone else. No one read them but me. The federal prosecutor was unaware that they even existed, and once we learned she was snooping around, I destroyed them.”
Meaning it wasn’t one of her people who ratted her out, I told myself. If so, they wouldn’t have waited until now. They would have done it when the prosecutor first began asking questions.
“What about your people?” I asked Daggett.
“Expanding our operation was not a secret by any means,” Daggett said. “It was discussed at our shareholders meeting. As for the details, I expect that most of the people in our corporate offices knew at least bits and pieces of what we were attempting to accomplish. Plus there were architects and construction firms involved, and lenders.”
“Was Minnesota River State Bank one of them?”
“I believe so, yes. Is that significant?”
“I couldn’t say. It’s a name that keeps popping up.”
“We weren’t trying to be secretive,” Daggett said. “We weren’t deceiving anyone. Why would we? We did nothing wrong. This is simply how business works.”
“Apparently the federal prosecutor disagreed.”
“She’s incapable of seeing the big picture,” Feeney said. “Making sure that Ryan-Reed remains in Minneapolis is for the common good of our citizens. Does she think that having them move to St. Paul—or Wisconsin, for God’s sake—is a more desirable outcome?”
“None of this is important,” Mickelson said. “What’s important, Taylor, is that the mayor’s notes might prove to a jury that the quid pro quo relationship that the Supreme Court believes is essential to proving official corruption existed between her and Ryan-Reed.”
“Nonsense,” Feeney said.
“Even if it doesn’t, this affair will not survive the smell test. The mayor’s deal with Ryan-Reed will probably collapse. The possibility of her remaining in office past her current term is problematic at best. That’s assuming she’s not impeached.”
“Scott,” Feeney said. She was clearly shocked by Mickelson’s assessment of her situation.
“These notes must not, cannot be revealed,” he added. “Do you understand, Taylor?”
“Perfectly,” I said. “But if they were destroyed…”
“The content of the notes—and thus the fact they were kept in the first place—was on the server the hacker hacked.”
“How did that happen?”
Mickelson’s eyes flickered onto the young woman sitting outside of the circle and flicked back.
Daggett was staring at Mickelson again when he said, “There is much at stake.”
“For me, too,” Mickelson said.
“On advice of counsel, we have not intervened. That might change.”
Mickelson didn’t respond to Daggett’s warning.
“Personally, I think this is all much ado about nothing,” Feeney said. “I’m innocent.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said.